Holy Melodrama, Batman!

The Hoosiers for Fair Taxation (so called) have announced a funeral march for the General Assembly’s “Organization Day.”

Per their press release, if a politician believes that property taxes are an acceptable part of the tax mix needed to fund government, that politician is not obeying the Rule of Law, is against cutting waste and inefficiency in government.

Citizen activists plan to send a clear message to the General Assembly on Organization Day that property tax repeal is the only acceptable fix to the tax crisis. Decades of legislator apathy, government waste, inefficiency, without regard for the welfare and security of Indiana’s citizens, are not acceptable employment terms for our politicians.

The funeral march symbolizes the political careers which shall come to an untimely end in 2008 should politicians not obey the Rule of Law, slash waste, eliminate inefficiency, and advance the process to permanently abolish property tax.

(Emphasis added) — Got that? Abolishing property taxes is the only legitimate solution. And, if you believe there is room to debate less radical approaches to funding government, you are against the Rule of Law, you are pro-government waste, you are pro-government inefficiency, and your legislative career deserves a funeral. Don’t you see? The logic is inescapable.

Frankly, I’d be a little skeptical of voting for any politician that aligns itself with such an addled, inflexible lobbying group.

Comments

The name “Melyssa Donaghy” didn’t immediately ring any bells, but then a Google search reminded me that she is also known as “Miss Ann” who got into a pissing match with the city awhile back over her dominatrix business.

Though, I’ve come to recognize over the years that interaction between the publicly sanctimonious and sex-oriented professionals is not nearly as rare as one might expect.

Interesting to see how the perceived absolutism of the Hoosiers for Fair Taxation is greeted with another absolutism of some of those who commented above me.

There are two schools of thought for moving public policy- absolutist and incrementalist. Some argue that the best way to move things in your direction is to take an absolute, extreme position, because you are going to negotiate anyway. If you take a moderate position, the reasoning goes, you end up further away from your goal when done negotiating than you might have had you started closer to the finish line. Others argue that you can’t even get people to the table if you take a position too radical. I believe there is merit to both arguments, but the key is to know your situation.

This has been a major thread of discussion within libertarian activists. For my own part, I took the moderate position as a candidate, nodding to the latter outlook. There was a good deal of second-guessing about that approach. Certainly, many core supporters were left flat by my strategy, My knowledge of the folks involved with this event is that they feel there is an opportunity to push hard towards their endpoint ideal- an opportunity that doesn’t come along often- so they are making the most of it while they can.

For what it’s worth, repeal most certainly *is* feasible. It merely requires a desire to drastically reduce spending on the part of our elected officials. It is not a given that the spending must always ratchet up. That’s a policy decision that is knowingly made. I think the organizers of the event believe this also, and therefore make their case. They have gone for melodrama so far this year and it has worked for them. Remember the Tea Parties, with the tax assessments dunked into various local waterways. I’m not one for melodrama or even protest events myself, but it seems to be working for them to some degree.

Remember, too, that this is largely a Marion County group, and it is the center of much of the property tax unrest. What seems like outrageous overstatement in one part of the state can be seen as downright moderate elsewhere.

when Lake County got socked a couple years ago.. no one seemed to care. But then, who cares when they never vote Republican, live in a different time zone, and can’t get the attention of the Indy media.. the only ones that count?

mike, the legislature isn’t going to make the kinds of massive cuts you propose anytime soon, because they know the public would be up in arms about the corresponding cuts in services. plus they have their own pet projects to protect.

call me absolutist if you want, but i’m just being realistic. this isn’t a libertarian thought experiment.

I know full well life isn’t a thought experiment, but Doug’s post was mainly on the flamboyant nature of the demonstration, plus the intractable language. What you may call a thought experiment is what others call strategy for getting their policy desires employed. There are flamboyant demonstrations for all sorts of things out there- anti-war, anti-abortion come to mind most quickly, and those tend to have far more absolutist tones and outrageous imagery and stunts. Maybe we’ll dulled to those anymore because we’ve seen them.

I honestly believe that government services are far overvalued. For my part, I only ever directly use those related to safety, infrastructure, parks, and public record items. The rest could pretty well be swept from the face of the earth tomorrow and it wouldn’t impact my life one iota, except to make it a less expensive place to live. I wouldn’t be up in arms one tiny bit.

Every now and again, the injustice of that begins to occur to me, and I come to sympathize with the tax protesters.

Dougâ€™s post was mainly on the flamboyant nature of the demonstration, plus the intractable language. What you may call a thought experiment is what others call strategy for getting their policy desires

You’re right. But, as it happens, that sort of strategy annoys me greatly. I really hate blow hards who pound on the table to get what they want. I prefer to do my little part to marginalize that strategy by taking the words at face value and mocking them.

Arnie said “This fringe group had a total of 8 to 10 people protesting today. Hardly with discussing huh.”

Perhaps. But then the original Boston Tea party was likely hardly more than a dozen people. The Organization Day rally was in the middle of the work day. How many would you expect to turn out? How many could be there? How many smiles and waves did they get as they marched through downtown? Is this the tip of an iceberg?

These same activists put volunteers at key polling stations in Marion Country with signs and they distributed slate cards. They printed 40,000 slate cards and began distributing them through a chain of relationships in the two weeks prior to the mayoral election. Maybe Ballard would have won anyway. But then…

A demonstration is not a substitute referendum in which legislators and pundits count the number of demonstrators to determine whether an idea has merit. A demonstration is a means of making a complex story newsworthy to a simplistic media.

You might want to think again about whether the people who are doing this are on top of a powerful political wind and their ideas worth discussing after all.

However, I think that I’m particularly ticklish on the issue of tax protests. It’s so easy to be anti-tax. And, while we aren’t well served by being over taxed, we also suffer when government doesn’t have the resources necessary to maintain the commons.

As I wrote to one of the folks with the tax protest group, my ability to prosper is closely tied to having an environment where the police keep crime to a dull roar, the courts help me enforce my contracts, the drainage system keeps the rains from ruining my real estate, and the streets and bridges are in good repair so I can send and receive goods. It’s a matter of striking the appropriate balance, and I don’t see a funeral march as being all that helpful in figuring out the appropriate balance.

St. Alio says “there is simply no comparison between a dozen or so people in costumes holding signs.”

True enough, but do you really WANT acts “of political vandalism. thousands of pounds worth of property … destroyed. The people who did it …imprisoned if caught.”

There are people in this state who have been so traumatized by taxes that they are contemplating just that. Publicity stunts are a safety valve because the protest is seen in the news. The fact that the protests irritate you is also good because that irriation just might get you curious about why these people are so outraged.

The effects of tax policy in this state have been so mismanaged that it has caused crisis in many households. Perhaps you don’t quite comprehend the problem, but others are stunned by how hard they have been hit.

Doug says, “I donâ€™t see a funeral march as being all that helpful in figuring out the appropriate balance.”

You are right about that. Unfortunately, Indiana political decisions, that is, Indiana law, is being created by means of an irrational and corrupt process. The legislators act as if the present crisis happened by accident, or was an act of God. Let’s be clear. The present crisis was created by an irrational and too often corrupt politcal process. Those in power have no interest in stepping outside that process to solve the crisis.

The Indiana constitution provides us with a weak governor and a strong legislature. The legislature , however, is dominated by two people, the house and senate majority leaders. Under the rules by which they operate they can control what comes to the floor for consideration.

Eliminating property tax is not likely to be even considered. Why? Because it is very lucrative to a very small group of people who spend a lot of money influencing people like Long, Kenley, and Bauer. What we hear from them is a “straw man” argument that sales and income tax would have to go through the roof. Yet, no good data has been offered to support that claim. For instance, taxing services could alone double sales tax income. Who resists this? Accountants, lawyers, and physicians who do not want to be troubled with the burden of collecting and remitting the tax. They have no problem with the fact that every pushcart vendor suffers that burden.

The merits or flaws of property tax could be reasonably discussed. We could have real information on the table so that people could make a rational decision on that “balance,” which rightly concerns you. Both the Governor and the legislature have the resources available to provide an open and complete examination of Indiana’a tax structure and possible alternatives. But our government, as it is constituted, has no interest in doing so. Instead they offer up proposals with hidden agendas.

So, that leaves us to do our best to vote out incumbents at the poles, pass the hat among ourselves so we can hire an IU professor to help us put substantive data before the public eye, and constantly keep the issue newsworthy with publicity stunts.

There will be more to come.

For a more complete discussion of the problems with property tax see indianavotersleague.org